Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 7,596,956, herein incorporated by reference, teaches a self-contained cooling system (SCCS) slide-in module featuring a housing that contains a single thermoelectric cooling assembly supported therein to dispose the hot and cold sides of the thermoelectric cooling assembly in opposite ones of two separated chambers within the housing's interior. The hot side chamber is communicated with the housing exterior by inlet and outlet openings in a front end face of the SCCS module housing, while the cold side chamber is communicated with the housing exterior at a top or bottom panel of the housing. Placed at the bottom or top of a cabinet so that the hot side chamber is communicated with the ambient environment outside the cabinet through an open portion of the cabinet's front face below or above the cabinet door, the air inside the cabinet is cooled by exposure to the cold side of the thermoelectric cooling assembly and ambient air is drawn into the housing through the inlet openings in the front face to draw heat from the hot side and subsequently exhaust this heated air back through the front face at the outlet openings.
It would be desirable to increase the cooling effect of the cooling module by adding at least one additional thermoelectric cooling assembly to the cooling system without having to effectively double the overall size of the cooling module to accommodate the greater intake of ambient air needed to effect the cooling of the increased number of thermoelectric cooling assemblies used in the system.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,385,020 and 6,959,555 teach thermoelectric systems in which multiple thermoelectric modules are employed to expose their corresponding sides to a common airflow to increase a heating or cooling effect on that airflow. However, the systems laid out in these references are not configured for optimal use as non-integral, removable, stand-alone devices that can be easy added to any enclosure to provide a heating or cooling function therein.
Applicant has now developed improved thermoelectric heating or cooling systems that accommodate multiple thermoelectric cooling assemblies in a space efficient manner, and unique thermoelectric engine designs stemming from development of these cooling systems.